The Prototypes Behind Journey

At one point shortly after finishing Flower, the developers at indie studio Thatgamecompany rounded up members of the God of War team and other staff in Sony's Santa Monica office, sat them down "in random rooms and closets in the building," according to producer Robin Hunicke, and presented them with a 2D Flash prototype running on a PC.

It looked more like a 2600 game than anything the studio was known for, with the main character appearing as a circle with a line sticking out -- "like a little tank," says Hunicke -- next to flat blocks in a top-down view. Focus testers moved from point A to point B, with mechanics designed to reward them for interacting with one another -- when one left a path on the ground, the other could run along it for a speed boost; if the two stuck close together, the camera zoomed out to let them see farther into the distance.

Thatgamecompany president Kellee Santiago, creative director Jenova Chen, and producer Robin Hunicke pose with the main character from Journey at E3 2011.

"The whole idea of the prototype was to test the idea of anonymous mute action-based gameplay, where actions speak for you much more loudly than words, and where you wouldn't know what the person you were playing with looked like or where they were from," says Hunicke.

The team's theory was if they could make players connect with each other in an emotionless setting, then they could later amplify those concepts by adding art and music and a 3D world. A few hundred play tests later and their results have turned into one of the most critically acclaimed titles in recent memory: Journey, part adventure game/part experiment in creating a new form of communication between players by removing voice, combat, and the aggressive subtleties that exist in other games.

The 2D Prototypes: Roping and Dragon

Sitting down to talk at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco, Thatgamecompany creative director Jenova Chen explains that the deconstructed tank demo was only one of many prototypes the team designed while working on the game. He opens his laptop and pulls up seven video clips showing ideas the team tried.

Chen begins with the oldest of the batch, a "Roping" demo that looks like a 2D platformer in which players work together to make their way up a series of platforms -- a skinny character can move quickly, a heavy character can break rocks, a big head character can boost the others' abilities, and everyone can drop ropes for those below them to climb.

Because the rope idea depends on co-op partners, Chen says the team ended up cutting it from the final game in favor of a solution where players could scale carpets on their own.

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Comments (14)

What the 2d prototypes show is...

The 2d prototypes show that Thatgamecompany is incapable of creating a fun game at even the most basic level. So, instead, they focus on creating something "beautiful" and "meaningful", and hope you forget about that whole "this is supposed to be a game" thing.

More prototypes!

Most behind-the-scenes stuff tends to show off the beginnings of features that are included in the final game. That's cool and all, but it's interesting to see things that got cut too. The "invisible" decisions that developers have to make don't really get talked about outside the studio. I would love to see this kind of article used as a regular feature.

Thanks

I'd love to do it as a regular feature. We've tried to do this kind of story a lot, and had mixed success convincing developers to play along -- I was really happy with the early footage we got for Okami, Mirror's Edge, God of War 3, NBA Jam, Uncharted 3, and a few others, but we've probably pitched the idea to 20 or 30 more over the years without much luck.

One thing I hear from some developers is they don't want to show cut features because it leads to judgemental user comments -- criticizing them for leaving those features out, or for choosing to focus on other parts of the game. And there are usually good reasons why things get cut, but it can be tough to get those across. All of which makes it frustrating for me, since that makes it harder to convince companies to free up these kinds of assets/details, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

We'll keep trying! And we've been seeing companies put out more of these kinds of things on their own over the past few years, so I think the trend is shifting more in that direction.

me neither

Brilliant...

I'm perpetually overwhelmed by this title after my handful of playthroughs. I can't get it out of my head. So beautiful. So haunting.

I like in the "set the mood" trailer the early iteration of the "enemy" character and how organic (massive hammerhead? too cool) it was and how it evolved into such an abstract, crudely defined beast.

The animation gurus at ND can have their massive budgets. Polygon counts and abstract aesthetic considered, Journey's desert environments still feel more tangible, relevant, and just overall more real than anything UC 3 did.

And Gears had more character development than Mario land 3D

I can compare games with nothing in common except being games too. I'll admit that journey is about as well done as a game can get, I really couldn't find a flaw, unless you're counting the length. Even at that it's a bit longer than your average movie and costs about the same so that's a non-issue to me. That doesn't make it comprable to a game that's main drive is not artistic expression but rather delivery of and interactive cinematic experience. It's like comparing the Mona Lisa to a Bat Man comic.